


John Watson Prevents Fratricide

by Miss_Communication



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Comedy, Crack, Drabble, Ficlet, Gen, Humour, Sort-of, Tumblr Prompt, Vignette, and I would love to see it actually because the idea of it cracks me up, honestly I can see it happening in the early series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-03
Updated: 2017-05-03
Packaged: 2018-10-27 06:21:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10803534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_Communication/pseuds/Miss_Communication
Summary: A tumblr post by umbrellabadge posited that Mycroft Holmes has been kidnapped before, with the goal of getting at Sherlock Holmes. I found this hilarious in itself, considering Mycroft is probably far more valuable as an asset in himself, compared to his relationship with Sherlock. A reblog by fuck-rand suggested that Sherlock never even helps Mycroft out of it, and I was inspired to capture the possible fallout of that situation as closely as it appeared in my head. Was reminded by another tumblr post, recently, that tumblr may (will) fall one day, and any fanfic, including drabbles, should be archived here for posterity.





	John Watson Prevents Fratricide

**Author's Note:**

> This is posted verbatim from tumblr, unedited. Since that is how it was originally published, I decided to keep it as it is.

Three days after Mycroft had gone missing, he rocks up at the flat, impeccably dressed as usual, but there are scuff-marks on his brolly and his face is a mess. Sherlock glances at him from the desk, but affects disinterest as he browses client emails.

“Hello, brother mine, just popping in to check that the last week hasn’t been too hard on you.” Mycroft walks towards the desk with a limp only Sherlock would notice, and speaks with a nasal impediment even Anderson would’ve noticed. “You seem well.”

“What? Yes, yes, I’m fine. You look a little banged up.”

“Mhmm, well, it’s all rather unfortunate, really. I’ve had to cancel all my face-to-face appointments for the next fortnight. Poor Anthea’s developing RSI in her thumbs.”

“Your face _and_ her thumbs gone? Society could crumble.”

“Mhmm.”

“Might want to see if you can connect that phone directly to her brain, bypass the thumbs completely.”

“Quite.”

The silence that follows is a stand-off that Mycroft frankly has neither the energy nor patience for, and he squints. He takes a step closer and appears to inspect the carpet.

“Good of you not to cave into the demands of my captors, Sherlock. Would’ve been awfully inconvenient for, well, _national security_.”

“Yes, you know how I worry about national security.”

Mycroft takes another step closer, hovering at the edge of the desk, eyeing the print-outs of ransom demands. Looming over his little brother.

“Well,” he says, giving a brief, grimace-like smile that quickly becomes a real grimace as even that small motion crinkles his nose rather painfully. “Still. I was worried you’d cave when they started with the fingernails.”

Sherlock turns and cranes his neck back to look at Mycroft, and the tiniest tell of guilt flashes across his face, before it is replaced with nonchalance and a smidge of well-concealed fear. Mycroft lets his ire show.

Sherlock shifts back in the chair, wishing he could put some distance between them. Mycroft is looking more murderous than he has seen since childhood, and Sherlock’s beginning to worry he might end up skewered by that umbrella.

The front door thuds shut and John’s footsteps can be heard on the stairs.

“Honestly, Mycroft, they were absolute amateurs,” he says, trying for nothing more than bored disdain. “The only thing they had going for them was inside help avoiding the CCTV! And even with that connection? They didn’t actually _want_ any information of national importance; they just wanted me to stop investigating their petty trafficking ring.”

“And did you?”

“Before they even got to you. It was barely a four, honestly, Lestrade could’ve handled it himself.”

John appears at the door and hangs up his coat, taking in the familial tension across the room. “Oh, Mycroft. Everything alright?”

“So, just to recap,” Mycroft says, ignoring John, “no information was requested or obtained.”

“Not as such.”

“But you must have been very busy the last few days,” Mycroft says icily, “given that you preferred to work on this problem _without_ MI6 while I was out of office and incommunicado on my … _sojourn_ to the countryside.”

“Oh,” said John, walking towards them, “have you been on holiday, Mycroft?”

Mycroft and Sherlock both turn to look at him; Mycroft, a vision of (slapstick, for him) incredulity while Sherlock glares daggers. In that brief moment John notices with alarm that Mycroft’s nose is clearly broken, and his face is more sticky-plasters and bruises than it is skin.

What happens next is that John, brought up short in the middle of the sitting room, stands and watches the tableau unfold in slow-motion.

Mycroft turns back to Sherlock, dropping the umbrella; Sherlock blanches and knocks the chair back trying to get out of it. Mycroft brings his hands up and wraps his somewhat bandaged fingers around Sherlock’s neck, Sherlock’s eyes go wide and they both go crashing to the floor, Sherlock yelping as he lands backwards over a chair and Mycroft lands on him, in a manner which makes John flinch inwardly in sympathy.

Outwardly, John stands gaping like a stunned mullet for three full seconds before he kicks into gear and dives in to the fray to try to separate Sherlock and Mycroft; the former red-faced, scrabbling for purchase in his awkward position and wheezing out “Sorry, I’m sorry!” while the latter, also absolutely beet-red bellows “ **My _fucking fingernails_ you _hateful little fuck!_** ” while vacillating between strangling and just slamming Sherlock’s head into the ground.

It’s not until the next morning, sitting in the kitchen nursing a cuppa that John has time to reflect on the previous evening’s events.

Anthea had come sprinting up the stairs when she’d heard her superior screaming expletives for the first time in all her years of service. She helped John wrestle Mycroft off of Sherlock and John had been given the whole story. (”You didn’t think to mention that your brother had been _kidnapped_ , Sherlock?”) John had given Mycroft a thorough look-over and re-bandaged a few of his bleeding, _sans-fingernails_ fingers, while throwing alarmed looks at Anthea, who had taken a defensive stance between Mycroft and Sherlock, and had made it apparent that if Sherlock so much as twitched she’d be the next to throttle him. After seeing Mycroft and Anthea out, John had absolutely ripped it through a petulant, croaky-voiced Sherlock until he’d seemed suitably chagrined and had hobbled into his room to sulk.

Sherlock shuffles out of his room with a hand on his back and John is struck with the image of Mycroft strangling his brother, his face frozen in righteous anger and Sherlock’s in alarm. John’s unused to feeling sorry for Mycroft Holmes, but as he watches Sherlock make a cup of tea with obvious pain, all he feels is amazed, unbridled glee.

Sherlock squints at him. “ _What_?”

“I’ve just had a few epiphanies,” says John, smiling and taking a sip of tea. He holds up a finger. “One: I think I can finally envisage those Christmas dinners. Two: I’ve learned that your brother has emotions, _and_ that I can actually sympathise with them.”

“And three?” Sherlock asks with a look on his face that John can only describe as positively _bitchy_.

“I’ve discovered what true schadenfreude feels like.”

Sherlock scowls at John’s ensuing laughter and retreats back to his room, where he spends the rest of the morning petulantly organising gift-baskets and a masseuse for his brother _and_ Anthea. He then starts work on the first of six dull case files that Mycroft has asked for his help on over the last three years, and grudgingly vows to himself to be a bit more proactive when his brother gets kidnapped in future.

**Author's Note:**

> If you liked this hypothetical snippet in time, and have a prompt you want me to throw at me, head to m1ssc0mmun1cat10n.tumblr.com. No guarantees I'll be able to fulfill any, as I am at the mercy of my misbehaving brainmeat. I'm quite partial to humorous possibilities, so they're your best bet.


End file.
